Congrats on your dismal ratings WFNX

[ciao99]

Wow WFNX! How low can you go? You're ratings are practically at a year low.

That's what you get for adding juvenile garbage like "Love Lines". I remember listening to that schtick on Z100 in the 80's. A top 40 station.

That's also what happens when you play so many top 40 oldies. People don't listen to your station for Tears for Fears or the Police. If they do want to hear those bands, they want to hear the deep cuts, not the fluff hits you can hear on Mix 98.5 or Magic 106.7.

Bring back cutting edge music. If I want to hear the Beastie Boys once an hour, I'll listen to WBCN. It has a better signal, it comes in better.

 

[Signpost]

Bring back Kurt St. Thomas..

 

[ciao99]

Bring back Kurt St. Thomas..

I don't recall kurt st. thomas off hand. Can you tell more about him?

 

[Signpost]

He programmed WFNX in what I consider to be it's heyday during the early 1990's, and is known as the programmer who first played "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (he wrote a book about Nirvana).

At one point WFNX was approaching a 3 share 12+ during his tenure. I never saw it get that high again. Station aired a lot more features, was quite progressive for a commercial alternative, and was competing against a healthy, vibrant WBCN. Core artists back then were probably the Pixies, Depeche Mode, the Clash, the Cure, Echo & Bunnymen, Elvis Costello, PIL, Siouxie, Peter Gabriel, Dinosaur Jr. etc.

I might be mixing up my 'FNX eras 'cause it's all a blur.. but basically it still has yet to recover from Bruce Mittman taking that station active rock and alienating the listening base WFNX had built up over 20 years. During that period, iPods and mp3's came into vouge, and it seems all those former 'FNX listeners no longer listen to radio at all - even though 'FNX is sounding pretty good again - although I'm in agreement about all the Tears for Fears and Pretenders music.. they can leave that for MJX. I'd rather hear Deer Hunter and St.Vincent, but that's far too progressive for 'FNX to stomach.

 

[LA_Guy]

Radio is dead!

Two weeks ago, The New York Times Sunday edition had an article about how Columbis Records is trying a new tack to survive. One thing they did was hire some college students as interns. Here's a quote from the article with the pertinent sentance in caps. This was a five page article; the quoted portion represents less then 1% of the article.

here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/magazine/02rubin.t.html?pagewanted=1

The most scary part of the article is this (main point in caps):

This summer, Columbia Records began a program called Big Red. The company
invited 20 college students from Harvard, Penn State and the University of
Miami to work on various music projects. The interns concentrated mostly on
the digital marketing and promotions departments in Columbia's offices in
Midtown Manhattan, which are on Madison Avenue in a granite skyscraper
designed by Philip Johnson.

At the end of their paid internships, the students took part in focus groups
that were closely observed by Steve Barnett, Rubin's co-head at the label,
and
Mark DiDia, whom Rubin brought in as head of operations, as well as by other
Columbia executives. The focus groups may have been the real point of Big Red
-- Barnett and the New York executives, especially those who had been at Sony
for years, wanted to try to take the pulse of the elusive music audience.
"The Big Red focus groups were both depressing and informative, and they confirmed
what I -- and Rick -- already knew," DiDia told me afterward. "The kids all
said that a) NO ONE LISTENS TO THE RADIO ANY MORE, b) they mostly steal
music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from
iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool
anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the
biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about
music, bands, everything."


Get it? No one that's college age listens to the radio any more! They listen to Ipods and other MP3 players. Want proof? A friend of mine works for a discount store here in Los Angeles. He bought a bunch of off price flash memory MP3 players. Some of them were 1 Gb players with built in FM stereo radios, the others were 2 Gb players without radios. He priced them the same: $22.95. What happened? The 2 Gb players he can't keep in stock, while he can't GIVE AWAY the 1 Gb ones that have FM! He can't even sell them at 19.95! Is THAT a good ebough example for you?

To make things worse, WFNX's signal move, while making things better in downtown Boston, made things FAR WORSE everywhere else! There are a LOT of Arbitron diaries out in thsoe suburbs, and now WFNX can't be heard at all in any of them!
Besides, college students don't get many diaries (by nature of their being transient residents) and it's also proven that they usually don't fill them out if they do! Ther take the two dollars and throwthe rest away!

Trust me, WFNX is over-they're simply in denial. For that matter, music on FM is dead-it just doesnt know it. They played it too safe, and got too full of themselves-and all the listeners went away.

 

[Signpost]

Get it? No one that's college age listens to the radio any more!
I get it all too well.. in an earlier thread I was lamenting when 20somethings were blasting music in a car while stopped at a red light for all to hear - 10+ years ago i'd scan the dial and figure out what station they were listening to. Can't play that game anymore - they're not blasting the radio. There's hope though, i DID hear a small business playing WMJX today - instead of one of the satellite services they seem to play in stores now.

After all the corporate mergers, radio cannibalized itself by almost doubling the number of spots they played - used to be 7 to 9 spots an hour on the music stations - got up to 18 in some hours after 2000. Just when iPods hit the market. What unfortunate timing. What short term thinking.

But when you're listening to an iPod, you're isolated. Radio (& TV) - broadcasting in general - is communal. Many ears hear the same thing at the same time. I hope radio still holds some appeal even among iPod users.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Re: Radio is dead!

To make things worse, WFNX's signal move, while making things better in downtown Boston, made things FAR WORSE everywhere else! There are a LOT of Arbitron diaries out in thsoe suburbs, and now WFNX can't be heard at all in any of them!
Besides, college students don't get many diaries (by nature of their being transient residents) and it's also proven that they usually don't fill them out if they do! Ther take the two dollars and throwthe rest away!

I don't think that getting big ratings is necessarily the game plan for WFNX, because the station is used as a co-promotional vehicle with the weekly entertainment newspaper, which (especially now that it's free) is still extremely popular. As long as WFNX shows some listeners in the target demo, it continues to serve that purpose.

I'd guess that the transmitter move to Boston was more to please advertisers than to attempt to maximize ratings among students, or any other group. Most of their advertisers are trendy establishments in the city. If a potential advertiser in Boston says, "Hey, we see your newspapers in every box on every street corner, but we can't get your radio station in our office building...", then they may not get their account, and I'm sure their old Medford/Malden line transmitter didn't cut through all the intermodulation, steel and concrete in town like it does now from Financial Place.

 

[boondocksaint037]

Cruze also helped to kill the station.

Now they sport a HORRENDOUS morning show. Anyone who listens says that Leftover Lunch and the 6-10 p.m. show are the best times. Too bad they go to their conservative playlist (or Loveline) the rest of the day or bury everything in the overnight.

Also, they clearly miss the boat with their college target demo. The #1 album last year according to CMJ? TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain. The lead single (Wolf Like Me) probably didn't sniff 100 spins on FNX.

 

[redbaron]

How is the Sandbox? I'm not around a radio that early. And now Loveline at night, right?
There will always be a fair amount of "Joe J. Listener's" listening to radio whether it be classic rock, regular rock, hit music, or triple A. Thing with WFNX, and good for them for doing it, is when that Joe J. Listener tunes in it's unfamiliar. Both a positive and a negative for the station. It's always been a niche, except when they went full speed ahead after WAAF those handful of years ago. They alienated the loyal alternative audience then pretended they never played Godsmack and Limp BizKit.

They are spinning new, unheard, record label backed music (looking at online playlist)--Cold War Kids, Editors, Tokyo Police Club. Would love if Boston rock radio stations would support the local community. That is what created and supported the Boston bands in the 80s and 90s and help create legitamacy to that Joe Q.

 

[MassMusicMan]

Re: Radio is dead!

Get it? No one that's college age listens to the radio any more!

Are you going to let a story in the New York Times about a bunch of Harvard and Penn State students lead you to the conclusion that nobody who is college age is listening to the radio? Hell, 60% of people in this country who are college age don't go to college!

You make a good point as it relates to the struggles of FNX, but I'm not sure your argument carries water on a national level.

 

[ciao99]

Re: Radio is dead!

Are you going to let a story in the New York Times about a bunch of Harvard and Penn State students lead you to the conclusion that nobody who is college age is listening to the radio? Hell, 60% of people in this country who are college age don't go to college!

You make a good point as it relates to the struggles of FNX, but I'm not sure your argument carries water on a national level.
[/quote]

The NY Times is filled with Ivory Tower liberals! I do question their reporting nowadays. And oh, BTW I'm a liberal.

My own observations:
When I go to the gym, everyone has an iPod.
No one has walkmans with radios, no one cares.
When you want to hear a new song, you go to iTunes or elsewhere and download it.
When you don't know the title, you google it, get the title, hear a free 30 second snippet to make sure its what you really want, download it, and have it in your iPod in 5 minutes or less. No more hoping that the DJ says the name of the song when it's over. And we all know they rarely did. And no more ridiculous request lines that don't play real requests.

 

[TSBench]

Re: Radio is dead!

Get it? No one that's college age listens to the radio any more!

Are you going to let a story in the New York Times about a bunch of Harvard and Penn State students lead you to the conclusion that nobody who is college age is listening to the radio? Hell, 60% of people in this country who are college age don't go to college!

You make a good point as it relates to the struggles of FNX, but I'm not sure your argument carries water on a national level.

From Radio Ink......

Poll: Radio Listening Is Staying Stable
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- September 20, 2007: Sixty-three percent of American adults listen to the radio every day, says a new survey from American Media Services. And the number among 25-34 adults is even stronger: 79 percent tune in to radio at least once a day.

[EDIT-truncated for copyright concerns. For the rest of the story please click on the URL below. It has been provided as a courtesy by Radio-Info.]


http://www.radioink.com/HeadlineEntry.asp?hid=139280&pt=todaysnews

 

[radiorama1]

Re: Radio is dead!

"The kids all
said that a) NO ONE LISTENS TO THE RADIO ANY MORE, b) they mostly steal
music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from
iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool
anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the
biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about
music, bands, everything."

Agreed 100% that collge kids no longer listen to FM radio... but wouldn't that report be contradicting itself? b) states that the kids steal their music (also agree here 100% on that)... but then c) states that they get most of their music off of itunes... I don't know much about itunes but they don't give any music away for free, or do they? Just curious...

 

[radiorama1]

Now they sport a HORRENDOUS morning show. Anyone who listens says that Leftover Lunch and the 6-10 p.m. show are the best times. Too bad they go to their conservative playlist (or Loveline) the rest of the day or bury everything in the overnight.

The Leftover Luch, IMO, is one of the best shows right now on Boston Radio... along with Jamn's "Back In The Day Buffet at Noon"

 

[chrish]

To Dana and the many others on the board, sorry to disappoint you but WFNX is
doing just fine and having a great year. Eli is the only blogger that seems to have any understanding of the facts. Some of them I seem to have to point out over and over again.
Lets start with the transmitter move, Dana even you should be able to understand this...The initial reason for the move was not format based.
We were advised by three independent broadcast property brokers that if we upgraded the signal to its full potential by moving to Boston the property would double in value the day the switch was thrown. It has.
If you really gave this any thought you would realize that any signal especially a class A has limitations and it comes down to trade offs.
I would much rather have my densest signal where it is needed....for cutting through the steel and cement and severe the intermod of downtown Boston. The suburbs with wooden houses an low rise building are served well with moderate signal strength.
Also any thinking person that understands marketing knows that you want your best signal covering areas where the population density per square mile is the highest.
Boston, East Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Waltham, Quincy, entire Eastern South Shore for the first time ever etc. The old site had problems just about everywhere but the Mystic Valley.
WFNX conducted extensive in house and independent research pre and post site move utilizing the WFNX listener card base and also listener call and emails asking
if the signal is better, worse or the same, when all the data was tallied the
results concluded that for every listener complaining of a problem, 87 WFNX
listeners reported the signal to be the same or dramatically improved.
Yes...we got a few complaints from Framingham, Groton and a few calls north of 128 complaining that the signal on their $5.00 K-Mart shower radio was not very good. This if a fact of life in a majority of station transmoitter moves. I can live with that.

On the other had we got thousands of calls from listeners, Ad agency and Music
Reps thrilled that the station could finally be received where the action is.
The owners, the advertisers and 95% of the listeners are happy, a few whiney
bloggers on a web site don't mean much.

As for the 12+ numbers which Caio got wrong, these do not mean much to us either, as in the WBOS situation its very strong showing in key highly desirable 18-34 and 25-54 demographics that allow the great WFNX sales team put together by Gary Kurtz to fill the afternoon drive log with the following upscale advertising cliental to name a few:

Ikea
Guitar Center
Pep Boys
Odwalla Juices
Nissan
National Lumber
CBS TV Survivor CSI
Starbucks
Chevron Texaco-Havoline Motor Oil
Boarders Books
Harpoon Brewery
Dos Equis Beer
Jordans Furniture
Scotts Lawn Care ****ABC Network Spot
Radio Shack
Comcast Cable
Mass General Hospital
Eastern MountainSports
Newbury Comics
Valvoline Quick Lube Centers
Jamenson Irish Whiskey
Honda
Budweiser
Kayem Brautwaurst
Duracell
Hy Drive Energy Drinks

Just to name a few.....

This was Friday and Saturday afternoon 3-7 PM

WFNX is a great place to work, one of the last of it kind....locally owned, they employ 45-50 people and in my case pay well and they treat their employees top notch.

I have seen a few comments maybe on the Northern NE board that gives the impression that the company is cheap and has crap equipment, nothing could be further from the truth. All the FM facilities are being upgraded, the Boston and
92.1 in New Hampshire each have two new FM transmitters and all new top of the line processing and assessory equipment. Emergency Power is being added to the
Portsmouth market 92.1 and this week the Harris PR&E Rep will be on site to help prepare plans to do a complete gutting of the studio complex (7 year old PR&E equipment) upgrading 4 studios to digital including routing and master control. In three years I have never been turned down for a technical request...
sounds pretty generous to me.

To program more on the cutting edge side or lean toward playing the familiar hits is always debatable, but after involvement with Steve Rivers (WZOU-Kiss 108) seeing
the results he producted by leaning very familar and hit oriented, it hard to argue
with success.

The Phoenix Corp makes all divisions stand on their own, WFNX has to pull its
weight. Sorry to break the news to some of you.....WFNX is having a great year
with many more to come

 

[readingradio]

Re: Radio is dead!

.

My own observations:
When I go to the gym, everyone has an iPod.
No one has walkmans with radios, no one cares.
When you want to hear a new song, you go to iTunes or elsewhere and download it.
When you don't know the title, you google it, get the title, hear a free 30 second snippet to make sure its what you really want, download it, and have it in your iPod in 5 minutes or less. No more hoping that the DJ says the name of the song when it's over. And we all know they rarely did. And no more ridiculous request lines that don't play real requests.

Observations are one thing, but facts are another. Apple admits that the MOST requested feature on new iPods is an FM tuner. The reason they won't integrate one into their product (beyond the accessory level) is because they know radio is still a factor.

 

[Finn]

Anyone know the demographics of the people asking for the FM tuner? Average age higher than that of the average ipod buyer?

 

[webcastboy]

Observations are one thing, but facts are another. Apple admits that the MOST requested feature on new iPods is an FM tuner. The reason they won't integrate one into their product (beyond the accessory level) is because they know radio is still a factor.

That's part of it, but another equally important part is simplicity. Listen to some of John Maeda's speeches sometimes; it's not always particularly easy to grasp what he's saying, but he's got a great sense of how the concept of "simplicity" is hands-down the reason why iPods are so popular with users. It's been said that the original iPod was designed by taking a big list of features and controls and then going through the list over and over, seeing what they could get rid of and still meet the mission goals.

Adding an FM Tuner violates that "principle" entirely, so you'd have to recognize a tremendous benefit in order to take that big a step. Considering that there's no way you could fit anything but a fairly poor FM tuner in a package that small, and thus you'd be providing a questionable quality of service, I can see why Apple is so reluctant to add an FM tuner to the iPod. In a perfect world, HD Radio could conceivably change the equation, with the data services aspect...but there'd be so many issues with that I don't really see it happening enough to convince Apple to disregard the simplicity rule.

Plus, despite the current troubles from the RIAA, I'd wager Apple's thinking more along the lines of "radio" via webcasting anyway. Within a few years you won't be able to buy an iPod that isn't also a Wi-Fi enabled iPhone.

As for WFNX, while each business unit of Phoenix Media must, of course, justify its bottom line...let's not forget that WFNX is part of an overall brand identity with the Phoenix weekly and website. That brand identity is not going to be changed lightly, and certainly not based on some 12+ numbers that, we all should know, are next to useless for determining real ROI.

 

[Oldbones]

Portsmouth market 92.1 and this week the Harris PR&E Rep will be on site to help prepare plans to do a complete gutting of the studio complex (7 year old PR&E equipment) upgrading 4 studios to digital including routing and master control.

Do the Sanford or Milford 92.1s originate any significant amount of programming? I thought it was a straight simulcast of 101.7 with split spots. Seems overkill for rarely used "main studio".

To program more on the cutting edge side or lean toward playing the familiar hits is always debatable, but after involvement with Steve Rivers (WZOU-Kiss 108) seeing
the results he producted by leaning very familar and hit oriented, it hard to argue
with success.

Ahh, the eternal programming battle. Go for the small-in-number but extremely vocal music geeks or play the hits and aim for a larger, maybe less loyal audience. That debate never ends.

 

[readingradio]

"Adding an FM Tuner violates that "principle" entirely, so you'd have to recognize a tremendous benefit in order to take that big a step. Considering that there's no way you could fit anything but a fairly poor FM tuner in a package that small, and thus you'd be providing a questionable quality of service, I can see why Apple is so reluctant to add an FM tuner to the iPod. In a perfect world, HD Radio could conceivably change the equation, with the data services aspect...but there'd be so many issues with that I don't really see it happening enough to convince Apple to disregard the simplicity rule."

Sure, Apple is all about simplicity. But I believe they could very easily integrate a quality tuner if they wanted to. In fact, the accessory tuner they offer works beautifully.

So, before we all believe a corporate "principle," look at it this way...if you could hear the new Kanye West single 80 times a week on your iPod through the FM tuner option, why would you buy it and download it from iTunes?